Q. Are there are any current situations in the world that relate to the novel? What are they, and how do they relate? Does the novel shed any light on how current situations could be resolved or "fixed"?
A. First of all, the story "Animal Farm," written by George Orwell was written in 1945 to criticize the Soviet Union. Before we know the fact that this novel was written to criticize, it may be hard to recognize it, but after we know the purpose of this book, we can clearly see the resemblance between the situation of Animal Farm and Soviet Union. Starting with the idea, they both have an ideal theory called "Animalism" and "Communism." Animalism is an idea created in the animal farm. It emphasizes equality between animals and hostility against the human, which represents democrats. Communism is a social idea, which claims equal distribution of wealth within everyone. Both of these sound great, but they both fail in close future.
Currently, there are only a few communist nations left. China is currently in the process of changing to democracy and capitalism. However, North Korea, which is our close neighbor, is still adhering to the fallen idea. The setting and characters of Animal Farm have a somewhat direct correlation. Kim Jung IL can be considered as Napoleon, the sole leader of the Animal farms, and other animals who suffer from harsh labor and starvation are people living in North Korea.
Frankly, this novel shows no hope to the solution. At the end of this novel, six pigs and six people meet and play poker. Then, Napoleon and Pilkington start fighting with each other because two Aces of Spades came out at the same time. This represents the fight between communist ideas and other ideas. I think playing poker and having two Aces of Spades means they both have cheated and doing the wrong things to the people in their nation. Thus, this novel just shows the ending of communism, not the solution. Yet, it has an implicit solution, which is snowball. The novel mentions about snowball a few times after he is banned from the animal farm. I think this represents that if the animals didn’t ban Snowball, the animal farm would have had a better ending.
2 comments:
Most of the people who read Animal Farm decided to write about North Korea. I wrote about North Korea as well. I especially liked how you analyzed the ending. You compared the fight between the communists and the others with the fight between humans and pigs in the end. I thought this was really interesting because two Aces of Spades are the “aces” of the game. This represents how both sides were fighting over the same idea, yet their best ideas. Hence I believe that their fights have gone more cacophonous.
I agree with how Kim Jung Il could be illustrated as Napoleon in this novel because he is the current communist leader in North Korea. I liked how you said that “Animalism” emphasized the equality among the animals because this was the list of rules that made all the animals equal. However, later on, I felt bad when the pigs have changed these rules because all the animals weren’t equal any more.
I enjoyed reading your post. It was very thoughtful and insightful.
I think that this book is really good in terms of telling people the problem of communism and George Orwell really had a good example making certain animals greedy which is an example of the animals.
I agree Kim Jung Il being the ultimate dictator like Napoleon was. Where what Napoleon says is the rule and they have to follow it. I like =d reading the post about the Spade of Ace part where although they "looked" like that they were being friendly, but in that situation, they wanted to beat each other.
I think you brought up the really important things on your posts and I enjoyed reading it.
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